Fantasy Grounds Is Going Free To Play

Fantasy Grounds, the Virtual Tabletop (VTT) which launched over 20 years ago in 2004, has always been a premium option for VTT users. That is--until today! Because, effective immediately, Fantasy Grounds is free to use.

Previously an FG license cost $50, and then you had to buy the games and other modules you wanted to use with it. As of today, all users can host and join unlimited games with no purchase or subscription.

The software itself is free, although of course the marketplace contains a massive quantity of official licensed content, and add-ons like art, maps, tokens, and digital dice. Officially licensed material includes Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, and more, with over 50 game systems and more than 3,000 products.

There's also a new 'Online Reader'--a web-based compendium which enables you to access your Fantasy Grounds library from your browser.

 

[2$DM]

Very surprising development, but a smart move and making it much easier to get new players involved. Also the online reader is brilliant.

having access to all (most?) my purchased material via my phone now feels like a gamechanger, not to mention it partially addresses the need for having extra windows open when checking reference material mid battle or game

 

[pablomaz]

Wishing SmiteWorks all the luck in the world!
I've been a regular user of FGU since 2018, FVTT since its launch, and Roll20 since 2012—and Fantasy Grounds has always been my favorite.
It’s a shame there’s still no licensed content for Shadowrun 6e, which happens to be the only game I’ve played in recent months.
I really hope the Cloud can handle the influx of new users...
Last night I checked my library in the reader and saw 20 items. Now there are 60! Still a lot missing, but if everything ends up there, it’ll be amazing.
Honestly, I thought the biggest barrier people would mention here on the forum would be the interface—not the fact that you have to install a software on your computer.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

I might have jumped on this just to have official Traveller material on a VTT. But since Mongoose is working on stuff for Foundry, then nope.

 

[smiteworks]

The product has been on Steam for eleven years - no one in all that time saw any value in revisiting the updater/installer to correct the "looping"/auto-shutdown problem that several users described?

This is not a common issue, so why would we write that some users have a problem installing it? You never reached out to support, the forums, or Discord to tell us what your issue was. You just posted a negative review with inaccurate info. All of those links you posted were not even the same issues.

Regarding the updater, we released this version on Steam 5 years ago. FG Classic was earlier and was a different program. Our installer has been rewritten and updated many times to work with changing versions of operating systems for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Here are the install instructions.

https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FGCP/pages/996639303/Installing+Fantasy+Grounds+VTT

I personally think it is rude to post a negative review bashing a company when you never attempted to contact support and see if they could assist you -- and for a free product, no less. Despite that, our team is still available to assist you.

 

[smiteworks]

Wishing SmiteWorks all the luck in the world!
I've been a regular user of FGU since 2018, FVTT since its launch, and Roll20 since 2012—and Fantasy Grounds has always been my favorite.
It’s a shame there’s still no licensed content for Shadowrun 6e, which happens to be the only game I’ve played in recent months.
I really hope the Cloud can handle the influx of new users...
Last night I checked my library in the reader and saw 20 items. Now there are 60! Still a lot missing, but if everything ends up there, it’ll be amazing.
Honestly, I thought the biggest barrier people would mention here on the forum would be the interface—not the fact that you have to install a software on your computer.

We have tried a few times in the past to get official Shadowrun support. Hopefully we can get it one day.

 

[pablomaz]

We have tried a few times in the past to get official Shadowrun support. Hopefully we can get it one day.

I think I read about it somewhere. Maybe Reddit? I've heard about problems in other platforms too to get official support. Well, I'm acquainted with people involved in the Brazilian localization of the books and I've heard a few things about the publisher...

 

[LordEntrails]

Despite that, our team is still available to assist you.

When folks ask why I chose FG and stick with it, there are a lot of reasons, but I forget this one. The company is run by people with class. Some day Doug, I'll buy you a drink.

 

[kronovan]

The product has been on Steam for eleven years - no one in all that time saw any value in revisiting the updater/installer to correct the "looping"/auto-shutdown problem that several users described?

Well to be fair to Smiteworks, there'd be no reason for them to address anything with Steam in regards to the updater, as it works independently of the Steam client. It's run by the Fantasy Ground launcher and you don't even need the Steam client runnning when you host with FG. It's best to shut down the Steam client when running FG, because it just takes up resources.

I've been using FG (both classic & unity) for about 8 years and have always had it installed on my E: drive without problems. I've had probably somewhere near a 100 players install the free client without issues. That includes a few successfully installing the old FG Classic on Linux-WINE, which TBH blew me away at the time - it was the last days of Classic, Smiteworks no longer supported it on Linux and those players were far from tech savvy. I've also been a player in a number of campaigns who's hosts purchased and installed FG from Steam and hosted without issues. Based upon all those experiences, I can only conclude that the installation process for FG is sound.

That said, I've no doubt you've genuinely encountered a failed installation that's challenging to resolve. I worked for years in software deployment and testing and saw my share of weird installation and auto-update failures and yeah, they can be a real pain. Here's the thing about software - you generaly never hear or read about the successes, but you cetainly do about the failures. So I've no doubt there's folks on Steam and fantasygrounds.com reporting failed installs, but I think you're making a mistake thinking those are anywhere near a trend, when they're actually exceptions.

 

[Zaukrie]

Wow! Gonna have to try this out again.